Personal history

December is closing in, and the weather is unpredictable. There’s been one brief snowfall, some low temperatures, and now suddenly it’s sunny and in the low 50s. Kind of like my life, I started to think, but then reminded myself that I’ve done a pretty good job off adapting to my new environment in the space of five months.

I came back to this country with a pretty clear idea of what I was going to do: become a freelance tutor. I’m doing that, but as with any small freelance business, it requires not only shrewd planning but tons of patience. I have to learn how to market myself, a new skill I haven’t quite developed yet. Networking is another problem; there’s no association or centralized database of private tutors, except on dedicated for-profit websites. It’s a challenge.

In the meantime, I’m working part-time for Pearson – yes, that Pearson, the huge testing and education behemoth headquartered in the UK, that has about a 40% share of the standardized testing market in the USA. I’m a Test Administrator, which means that I invigilate candidates as they take computerized tests, for professional licensing, college admissions, and other purposes. It’s a way to pay the rent. I’m a sometimes-substitute teacher for a language academy in Chicago as well.

I’ve reached a plateau, of sorts, which gives me a bit of breathing room and a respite from my intense two-year job search. That process left me exhausted and dispirited, and taught me two lessons: that age discrimination is very real in the education field, and that the market for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers is extremely limited.

In the meantime, I practice gratitude: I landed on my feet in Chicago, sort of; I had an 11-year career in China as a teacher, with its steep learning curve, professional development, and fascinating experiences; and finally, I’ve met each challenge as it presented itself, with self-assurance and relatively clear thinking. My dog and I have a comfortable place to live, and enough to sustain us for the moment. The realities of the shrinking job market, the “gig” economy, and difficulties of finding work after 60 will not defeat me; my survival and adaptive skills are pretty highly developed. Besides, there’s no alternative. It’s all about progress, not perfection, as they say in 12-step programs.

It’s a gray and drizzly day outside my window. October has arrived, and I’m marking my first three months in Chicago. I’m excited, since I’ve missed the turning of the seasons, especially autumn. In southern China, it seemed to be always an endless summer; before that, in Jiangsu and Sichuan, there were summer and winter seasons, occasionally with snow, but I missed the gradual changes as one time of year changed gradually and seductively into another. Before that, seasons in Los Angeles were distinguished only by a slight lowering of temperatures; if the air was clear and you could see the mountains, it was winter; when the smog and burning-eyeball season descended, it was summer.

Officially I’m unemployed, with no dependable, regular working hours and income. I’m working, sometimes diligently and fully focused, but only sporadically. I’m a substitute teacher for Stafford House, Chicago, and my freelance career as a private tutor hovers around 3-4 hours a week, but is failing to achieve lift-off. I’m in it for the long haul, anticipating two years to build my business and reputation, but what do I do in the meantime, right now? I’m applying for any and every job, pride be damned.

The honest truth? It sucks to be 61 years old and unemployed. It sucks to feel the pinch of age discrimination in the job market. Burning through my savings was not my idea of how to spend the time leading to my Golden Years. However, bitterness and resentment don’t put out positive vibes, nor do they lead to job offers. My 12-Step training is very useful now: one day at a time; KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid); and just act as if.

So that’s my current status: “As If.” FYI, in an earlier draft of this post I wrote a Pollyanna-ish, upbeat, rose-colored ending in which I imagined my happy future. I deleted it.

I’ve now been living in Suzhou for two and a half weeks. At long last the trials and tribulations of the visa process have come to an end, the car drive across China from Chengdu to the east coast has been done, and I’ve settled into my new apartment. In the midst of all this, three wonderful weeks spent in Chicago passed like a dream. As of this moment, I’ve met all of my EAP (English for Academic Purposes) students, approximately 80 of them divided into four classes. I have each class for four hours a week, which comes to 16 hours of teaching, plus office hours. Between classes I’m in my private office in the Science Building, complete with brand-new large-screen computer and a printer. I keep wanting to pinch myself – did all this really happen, despite my misgivings and uncertainty about ever obtaining a work visa? I guess they did.

Location of Suzhou in China

A short recap: I was offered a two-year teaching contract as an English Tutor at Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University, located in the section of Suzhou known as Higher Education Town, in the southern part of Suzhou Industrial Park. It’s a vast suburban sprawl, but with some stunningly beautiful landscaping; the whole area, so I’ve read, is a joint venture between Singapore and China. Fortunately, the apartment I found is three bus stops away from school. The dog and I have settled in nicely, after surviving the two-day drive scrunched together in the back seat of my hired driver’s car next to my luggage. I’d previously spent two and a half days in Suzhou before departing the country to renew my visa in the US. In between rain storms, I’d spent one afternoon looking at apartments with an agent, settling on the final one I saw, with two bedrooms. After my round-trip flight from Shanghai to Chicago, I returned to Chengdu for three days, made some quick goodbyes, and now here I am.

Art gallery and teahouse in Suzhou

I’ll write more about my first week of teaching after I have a chance to sit down and think about all I’ve experienced so far, but for now my feet are so sore from standing in a classroom for up to four hours at a time that I just need a rest. In the meantime, Here are some pictures of Suzhou and of the XJTLU campus.

Once I have internet connected in my apartment, and I don’t have to depend on coffee house wifi, I will share my thoughts about starting my M.A. program by distance learning.

My current plan is to stay in Chengdu for one more year, until I’ve completed the three core modules for the M.A. in Teaching English for Academic Purposes. At that point I’ll be halfway through the degree program. At the same time, I plan to complete the DELTA certificate online, which will give me qualifications to pursue higher-level teaching jobs beginning in 2014.

When my brother Kenton called me with the news of our father’s death, I got a falling feeling, as when a chasm opens below you and you don’t know what to hold on to or how to save yourself from annihilation.

My father was 85; he had cancer, and heart and lung trouble. He had suffered a horrible fall a few weeks earlier. He had been moved to the Alzheimer’s ward of the assisted-care center he had recently moved into. I’d had a sinking feeling for several days: last week I’d dreamt that he and I visited a funeral home together. No matter how prepared you feel, you never really are.

My father and I had never been close. There was a world of unspoken emotion and life experience between us. Many things contributed to this – our parents’ push-pull relationship when we were children, my feelings of somehow being a disappointment to him, my being gay, my father’s strict fundamentalist religious beliefs, and both of our inability to let others get close to us emotionally.

As a young child, I both loved and feared him. I sat at his feet and watched him get ready for work in the morning. I was devastated if he left home and drove away without waving goodbye to me. His wish for me to excel in things I couldn’t – sports and math – went unfulfilled. He could be a rage-aholic at times. When my parents grew further apart during my teens, and divorced when I was in college, the distance between us grew greater.

I spent much of my life living far from him, first in Los Angeles, and now in China. He and my stepmother Bonnie came to China in 2008, and we spent a week in Beijing together. I thought that would be the last time I would see him, yet when he asked me to come home to visit him last summer for his 85th birthday, I was able to spend a week with him. My brother and I were briefly together with him one last time.

My father spent his entire life in St. Joseph, Missouri. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, he joined his uncle’s real estate company. He eventually went into business for himself as a real estate appraiser. There are many things I now wish I had asked him about his life. I did ask him once about his service in the U.S. occupation forces in Japan after the end of World War II. He told me about riding a train through Japan and witnessing the horrifying landscape of devastation after the atomic bombs had been dropped.

My father, I hope that the next part of your journey, whatever it entails, is filled with peace and the knowledge that you are loved.